holiday card giveaway!!!

it's finally here- my first giveaway (well on this blog)!

i will be giving away a variety pack of holiday cards- 2 each of the following, with 4 gray envelopes and 4 red envelopes. please see my shop for more images:
to enter the giveaway:

1. follow my blog (this is mandatory!)
2. leave a comment

you may leave as many comments as you like, however, they have to be real comments, and more than 3 words long. you could for example, take a peek at my shop and tell me what your favorite item is. or, perhaps, tell me what your favorite fall holiday dessert is... or what you are going to be for halloween.

the giveaway is open until friday, november 6, midnight. afterward, i will draw a number using random.org. the matching comment # wins. please make sure to leave a way for me to contact you, whether it's via etsy, email, or your blog.
to add to the merriness, i will be offering a early holiday card shopper discount- buy one pack of holiday cards, get the 2nd pack (equal or lesser value) 20% off, from today to oct 31st.

good luck everyone!

small details

my latest flatware pouch with some minor changes ...

a) straight, angular edges on the flap
b) grosgrain ribbon for straps (reminds me of wrapping presents now!)

i'll continue making pouches with rounded flap edges, but i think i like this new edgier look. pretty appropriate fabric for a flatware pouch, no?

a haiku

a package is lost
somewhere in kirkkonummi
a cold baby cries
.....

remember the baby blanket i made for my friend? she never received it :(

photo site

last week i signed up for an account on flikr: www.flikr.com/photos/clearlytangled. i'll be posting more photos there of products that i am currently making available locally (and by custom order on etsy).

holiday preview

i start getting antsy sometime during september, always a little excited about what is soon to come: october. I love autumn. nevermind the fact that houston doesn’t really have a fall. i am not a big fan of halloween, but it marks the beginning of the holiday season. after living abroad for a couple years, i realized how much i enjoy the kitschy american commercialism of the fall/winter holidays. i thoroughly enjoy all the tacky store décor, along with all the useless seasonal goods, even though i rarely, if ever, purchase them. we have had a few fleeting moments of cool weather this past month (meaning, under 80F), and every time it has filled me with joy. this time of year always inspires me to bake all kinds of pumpkin based goodies, bust out the hats and scarves (not that I need them), and buy new winter shoes (once again, not that i need them). i also begin daydreaming about christmas. christmas trees. christmas treats. christmas music. christmas gifts.

to kick off the season, i decided to get a somewhat early start on my holiday cards for etsy, so, here is a preview of this year’s christmas cards. i will be posting them in my shop sometime this month or early next- i haven’t quite decided… thoughts? anyone?

featured on the front page

the best kind of surprises are the unexpected ones. after i returned from work today, i checked my etsy shop and noticed some unusual activity. i realized that i had gained 17 new store hearts, 31 new item hearts, and one more sale. oh, and not to mention, i had over a hundred new views from out of nowhere.
i did some research, and apparently i was featured this afternoon on the front page of etsy! my very first etsy front page feature! thanks to craftcult for keeping track of these things. see my flatware pouch? bottom row, middle.

yay.

faux quilted baby blanket

i wrote this a while ago, planning on posting it after my friend received her blanket just in case she checked my blog. i think she must have received the gift by now, but i'm not sure, and i can't wait any longer!! so i hope i don't ruin the surprise for her by posting it.
------------------
babies. babies everywhere. in the past two years, i know at least eight couples who have had babies. five more are currently expecting. clearly i need to be avoiding whatever water they are drinking.

the nice thing about babies is they use tiny things. and tiny things are very cute. a couple months ago, i ambitiously decided to make my expecting friend a "quilted" baby blanket. had i ever made a baby blanket before? no. do i know anything about using batting and quilting? no.

so i googled. i looked at a lot of baby blankets. i read various experiences. and this is a tutorial i found: http://icraftblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/minky-blanket-tutorial.html afterall, why reinvent the wheel?

i discovered what minky fabric is. it's a very interesting type of fabric. first of all it is very soft. you immediately want to jump into bed with it. sometimes it comes with these little raised dots that you can push in, and then back out. very enjoyable. also it is as slippery as slippery can be. in other words, a real giant pain to sew.

making the baby blanket is pretty straightforward, as you can see from the tutorial above.
you just need two pieces of fabric- one minky fabric, one patterned fabric, and to faux quilt, quilt batting. i used alexander henry's apples and pears fabric and light green minky. i don't know what gender my friend's baby is going to be, so i thought a blanket with blues, pinks, yellows AND greens was a safe bet. i chose to make the blanket 35" by 35", so all my pieces were 36"X36". the tricky part for me was that i wanted to add some thickness to the blanket. google wasn't very helpful in this matter, so i devised my own faux quilting method.


i designed a little pattern of squares (see below). then i drew the lines onto my top fabric with my trusty dritz fabric pen, yard long ruler, and my right angle ruler. i positioned the batting under it, pinned it all together and sewed. voila. faux quilting.


then i pinned down the minky fabric, face down on top of the faux quilted piece. i used a lot of pins. some of them stuck me. i sewed the pieces together, leaving a gap on one side.. oh maybe 6 inches? unlike the tutorial, i didn't follow the edge of the cotton fabric because the batting was in the way and i feared the edge would be deceptively straight or crooked. the minky wasn't exactly perfect either, but it was a tolerable alternative. after i finished sewing around the edges, i flipped it inside out, pressed the seams a bit, and top stitched around (crookedly. i apologize to my friend. i blame the slippery minky!!)


so to review the steps:

1. cut top fabric, minky fabric, and batting 36" X 36"
2. draw faux quilting pattern on top fabric
3. faux quilt the top fabric and batting together
4. sew around the edges of the new faux quilted piece and the minky piece with their top sides facing together, leaving a gap
5. turn blanket inside out
6. top stitch all the way around (making sure to tuck in that seam where the gap is)
7. wash your blanket



there you have it. faux quilted baby blanket. soft. fluffy. and living in finland now.